


Happy Birthday to You

by ThatCatLover



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Jason's birthday, Major character death - Freeform, Not Happy, Other, Spoliers for Burning Maze, mentions of vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 03:05:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15133724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatCatLover/pseuds/ThatCatLover
Summary: Happy Birthday, Jason?(sorry, this isn't happy at all)





	Happy Birthday to You

Nico sat on the roof of the Hades cabin. His sock-clad feet dangled off the edge and he stared up at the dark, ink-colored sky, really not seeing anything at all.

Not really caring enough to.

July first. A day that Nico wouldn’t have cared about three, two, even a year ago. He just didn’t have a reason to store that date in his mind as something special. But, less than a year prior, that had changed. That day now had meaning. July first was Jason Grace’s birthday.

It was supposed to be the first birthday that they spent together. Jason had joked with him that because Nico had spent a birthday with Percy a few years back, now he had to spend one with Jason to even it out. Nico probably wouldn’t admit it at gunpoint, but a part of him had hoped that Jason wasn’t totally joking. And an even smaller part of him had been excited.

But that couldn’t happen now. Nico couldn’t spend the day with Jason for the following reasons 1) The day was already nearly over with it being close to midnight and 2) Jason Grace was dead.

\--------------

Finding out had hurt more than being stabbed with a sword, more than Lycon scratches, more than anything he had endured in Tartarus. Usually, when he wanted to tell if someone died, he could just think about them, whether they were alive or not, and usually, the only thing he felt was a faint ringing in his ears. With Jason, he didn’t even think it just hit him with the full force of a speeding train. The ringing in his ears was deafening, he felt sick, land and other campers around him spun in a blur of blue sky, green grass and trees, and orange camp shirts. And then it stopped. And he realized. Jason Grace was dead.

He’d run to the infirmary trying to keep calm -though how could one keep calm when they had literally just felt their best friend die?- but the second he saw his infirmary friends- Austin, Kayla - and Will, his boyfriend, he shattered, breaking into sobs, throwing himself into Will’s arms, rapidly trying to explain. Will held him and tried to soothe him, (“Hey, slow down, Sunshine. Take it easy, deep breaths.”) but it was all in vain. His best friend was dead. It was like Bianca all over again.

The funeral in New Rome had proven to be even more painful than finding out. Reyna had forced the legion and all of Camp Jupiter to break tradition, making the funeral for only Jason’s closest friends. Held in a temple to Jupiter, only a few people were there. Piper, with her arms tight around her stomach making noises that seemed to be muffled screams of anguish. Reyna, with her head in her hands, trembling with shock. Percy and Annabeth, clutching each other tightly, Annabeth partly in Percy’s lap, each one openly sobbing into the other’s shoulder. Leo, his hand tightly grasped in Calypso’s his head on her shoulder, stunned with tears flowing down his face. Calypso stood, not knowing Jason and still grieving, occasionally turning her head to kiss Leo hairline. Frank cried with his arms around Hazel, who was a total wreck. Crying so hard that she had made herself sick, regurgitated in the corner where there was now a puddle of vomit that nobody cared enough to clean up. Upon entering the funeral, Nico had been tackled in a hug by Piper, suffocated by Reyna, and squished in between Percy and Annabeth before moving over to his sister with Will to cry. 

At the front of the temple, there was a long casket. Nico was no stranger to death and certainly not to coffins. Coffins were familiar to him, something he was used to like shadows, but the one that held the body of Jason Grace was not familiar. A friend’s coffin should never be familiar. The entire idea just felt so foreign, so dreamlike and Nico wanted nothing more than to pinch himself and shoot upright in bed in the Hades cabin and then go to yell at the entire Hypnos cabin. But deep down, he knew it wasn’t a dream. He couldn’t wake up so he stood next to Hael in his boyfriend’s arms and listened to the symphony of sobs surrounding him.

He thought that it couldn’t have gotten worse when, from the back of the temple, there was a shout. 

“Where is he?!” A hysterical voice cried. “Where’s my baby brother?!!” Nico turned and there in a crumpled black shirt reading “Punk’s not dead, you are”, gray hunting boots and a silver crown marking her the Lieutenant of Artemis, stood a furious Thalia Grace.

She marched up to the casket, ignoring her friends calling to her and Nico’s blood turned to ice when he saw her take one look at her dead brother and scream, throwing her head up to face the sky.

“Zeus!!” She cried “You saved me. Save him, now! Bring him back like you did with me!! I can’t lose him again! ” But the sky only rumbled miserably. Zeus, it seemed, was mourning, too. When nothing more happened, Thalia dropped to her knees and screamed, weeping.

\--------  
So now, Nico sat on the roof of the Hades cabin, sweating in the warm July night air. There he sat, wishing it was all only a dream, mourning the loss of his brother.

 

Happy Birthday to you, happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Jason. Happy birthday to you.

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like the ending was rushed, but what do you think?


End file.
